I locked my jaw. “You had Ascended hidden with you?”
“Ascended serve in the Temples—serve the True King,” Framont said. “They always have.”
“You didn’t know that?” Valyn asked.
I shook my head. “I wasn’t around many of them,” I told him. “Who all knew the Ascended were among you?”
“Only the trusted.” He looked up at me with a sort of wonder that was really beginning to border on creepy. “Only the Crown.”
Then the Duchess would’ve known. They were a part of the Crown.
Kieran tilted his head as Vonetta came through the doorway, leading another Priestess. “Where is the other?”
“He wasn’t very happy about being discovered,” Vonetta said with a sneer.
The Priestess Vonetta had a grip on suddenly stumbled forward into a beam of sunlight. The woman shrieked, jerking back. Faint smoke wafted from her robes, and the scent of burnt flesh hit the air. I turned to Vonetta.
“What?” Her brows rose. “I tripped.”
I stared at her.
Vonetta sighed. “She tried to bite me.” Grabbing hold of the Priestess’s arm, she yanked the vampry back and shoved her toward the others. “More than once.”
“Did you find any…?” I asked.
She gave a curt shake of her head. “A few others are still down there, looking.”
“I’ll show you.” A female Priestess spoke up, and my head snapped in her direction. “I’ll take you to them.”
Chapter 16
“If this is some sort of trap,” Kieran warned, “you won’t like what happens.”
“It’s not.” Her head finally lifted, and I saw that she was young. Gods. Not much older than I. Her eyes were a pretty cornflower blue. They were wide and eager like Framont’s.
Cracking open my senses, I reached out to her. I didn’t feel fear. I didn’t know what I felt. It wasn’t…nothing. It was just an emptiness that wasn’t very different from what I felt when I tried to read an Ascended.
“Why would you agree to take us to them now?” I asked.
“Because it is time,” she said softly.
My heart tripped as I stared at her, more than a little unnerved by the response—by all of this. “Show me.”
The Priestess rose and walked past the others still on the floor, her head bowed. Vonetta and Naill left the Ascended above with Valyn and the soldiers who’d been waiting outside. They joined us, along with Hisa and Emil, who’d arrived just as we started leaving the sanctum. All of them had their swords out as we entered the empty chamber and stepped through the narrow, tall break in the wall that became visible.
Torches lined the wall, casting an orangey glaze along the steep, earthen steps and wide-open chamber at the foot of them. Beyond them, nine tunnels connected to the opening, each lit by the faint glow of fire.
“It’s like a hive,” Hisa murmured as she scanned the circular space and the many openings.
The only sound was that of the Priestess’s robes whispering across the packed dirt that gave way to stone as she took a tunnel to our right, and that corridor branched into two more. Halfway through them, we met up with the others, who I had a feeling might’ve been a bit lost based on the earthy bursts of relief I felt from them. The temperature dropped significantly as we descended farther underground to the point where I found it difficult to believe that any mortal could survive long in this kind of cold. The air was dry, but it chilled the skin and sank into the bones. My fingers began to ache from it.
The Priestess reached for one of the torches on the wall. Naill stepped in close to her, keeping his sword poised in case she did something foolish.
But all she did was walk forward and then touch the torch to another. The joining of flames cast a brighter light upon the wall. I stopped. So did Kieran. The rock had marks carved into it—rock that was a reddish-pink color.
He reached out, tracing his fingers over a carving, following the shape—
The Priestess touched another torch with the one she held and set off a chain reaction. An entire row of torches flamed to life, filling the air with the pungent scent of flint. The underground system was suddenly bathed in rippling firelight.
“What in the gods’ names?” Kieran uttered, staring ahead.
I brushed past Vonetta, stepping down into a wide, circular opening. Water or something must have run through the cavern before, carving jagged formations out of the ceiling and depositing what appeared to be some sort of reddish mineral all along the spiraling and bizarre formations stretching down.
“Stalactites,” Naill said, and several gazes turned to him. He nodded toward the ceiling with his chin. “That’s what they’re called.”
“That sounds like a made-up word,” Emil said.
Naill arched a brow. “It’s not.”
“You sure about that?” Emil challenged.
“Yes,” Naill replied flatly. “If I were to create a word out of thin air, I would choose something more…interesting.”